Cognitive Psychology: a necessity for a human-centred design 💡

Joy Desdevises, PhD
4 min readFeb 19, 2024

--

Regardless of your profession, expertise, or interests, gaining knowledge about the functioning of the human mind can become a significant asset in your daily life, especially in a professional context. This can enable you to:

  • Better understand and grasp human behaviours, attitudes, motivations, thought mechanisms…
  • Integrate this knowledge into your practices to improve communication, optimise teamwork, design user-centric interfaces/services, and to better manage projects, conflicts and your managerial approach, among other aspects
  • Make informed decisions, thereby increasing your impact, persuasive abilities, and minimising risks (economic, time-related, etc.)

Indeed, it appears essential, particularly in the digital realm, to make decisions or propose solutions while being able to support them with objective and scientific facts. It is a common habit to adopt ‘good practices’ without us being able to explain why, which hinders communication and decision-making. The inability to explain the ‘why’ also significantly increases the likelihood of being biased during decision-making.

Cognitive psychology is a scientific research discipline precisely designed to understand what drives the attitudes and behaviours of individuals, whether they are collaborators, users, clients, acquaintances, or yourself. The term ‘psychology’ refers to the study of the mind and mental life, while the term ‘cognitive’, derived from the Latin word ‘cognoscere’, broadly refers to knowledge and the process of knowing (Hodent, 2022; Lemaire & Didierjean, 2018).

Scientific studies within the field of cognitive psychology involve exploring, investigating, and deepening our understanding of functions or processes such as decision-making, reasoning, language, memory, emotions, perception, attention, motivation, creativity, and learning.

Although it is a scientific discipline, cognitive psychology is not confined to distant laboratories or research offices. It provides concrete and pragmatic knowledge for professionals, particularly for those working in the digital product and service domains. Whether you are a developer aiming to optimise user experience, a designer focusing on interface intuitiveness, a product manager addressing market needs, a data expert seeking to leverage product or company data, or any other design professional, these disciplines prove to be invaluable resources.

For this reason, we offer a series of articles that will allow you to discover some fundamentals of cognitive psychology and understand how these fundamentals can be consciously applied in your daily practices.

List of articles in the series

  • Cognitive Psychology: the necessity for a human-centred design
  • Perception: how does our brain shape our view of reality?
  • Visual perception: 5 laws to absolutely apply
  • Auditory perception: understanding and applying its principles
  • The perception-action through affordance: ingenuity or illusion? Is intuitive interaction truly possible?

To delve deeper…

Understanding the workings of the human mind extends beyond the boundaries of cognitive psychology.

A comprehensive understanding requires an interdisciplinary approach, notably integrating neuroscience. The combination of these two disciplines effectively allows for a holistic exploration of the links between mental processes and the biological foundations of the brain (Gazzaniga, 2004; Hodent, 2020).

As depicted in the diagram below, cognitive psychology and neuroscience fit into a broader field: cognitive science.

Figure 1. Simplified representation of cognitive science and its constituent disciplines | Source: created by Nora Kabbani (2023)

Let’s take a closer look at the definitions specific to these fields and disciplines:

  • The field of cognitive science is an interdisciplinary domain which aims to explore the complex mechanisms of human thought. Cognitive science integrates diverse perspectives such as cognitive psychology and neuroscience, as well as linguistics, artificial intelligence, and philosophy of mind, to understand how our brain processes information and generates behaviours (Gazzaniga, 2004; Hodent, 2020).
  • Neuroscience — a branch of cognitive science and biology — delves into the anatomical structure of the brain, neuronal connections, and the functions of different brain regions. It provides essential foundations for the cognitive processes studied by cognitive psychology.
  • Cognitive psychology focuses on the processes underlying behavioural and mental aspects, exploring how individuals acquire, store, process and use information (Hodent, 2022; Lemaire & Didierjean, 2018).
  • Ergonomics is a discipline that pertains to the study of human-machine interactions. It notably emerges from the interaction between cognitive psychology and computer science. For your information, user-centred design (e.g., UX design) can be considered an application of cognitive ergonomics (Hodent, 2022).

In summary, cognitive science encompasses a set of disciplines, including neuroscience and cognitive psychology. Their common subject of study is the human being, specifically the mental processes and cognitive functions that guide our behaviours and attitudes, such as memory, perception, reasoning, problem-solving, creativity, language, etc.

Bibliographic references

  • Gazzaniga, M. S. (2004). The cognitive neurosciences. MIT press.
  • Hodent, C. (2020). Dans le cerveau du gamer: Neurosciences et UX dans la conception de jeux vidéo. Dunod.
  • Hodent, C. (2022). L’UX, c’est quoi exactement?. Dunod.
  • Lemaire, P., & Didierjean, A. (2018). Introduction à la psychologie cognitive. De Boeck Supérieur.

Contributions

Original publication of this article in French 🔗

Author contributions
Joy Desdevises, PhD : conceptualisation, writing original draft, writing review and editing, translation
Nora Kabbani: writing review and editing

--

--

Joy Desdevises, PhD
Joy Desdevises, PhD

Written by Joy Desdevises, PhD

I hold a Ph.D. in Cognitive Psychology 🧠 and I work as a Product Designer Consultant 💻 In love with science 🔬

No responses yet